A Season of Depressing Political Re-runsby John Chuckman
www.dissidentvoice.org
February 23, 2005

Recent
political events resemble nothing so much as re-runs of movies that should
never have been released the first time.

Bush has gone to
Europe to “ease tensions” in the NATO alliance. Of course, those very
tensions were his work entirely, but a sense of the ridiculous never
discourages a Jehovah's Witness with a long list of house calls to make.

If you read the fine print under the marketing
blurbs for Bush's trip -- much like the microscopically-printed disclaimer
for a new prescription drug that hasn't undergone adequate testing -- you
will see that Bush's effort is directed at nothing more than securing
European help in the mess he has made of Iraq. This is just a new, more
subdued episode of previous Bush whining about being “either with us or
against us.” He wants a shred of legitimacy for what he's done, and he wants
other people to help pay his enormous bills. Fortunately, it appears at this
writing that Europe, while listening politely and offering a cookie to
soothe Bush's whining, is not about to alter its sensible course.

In another dreary
re-run, America’s Republicans have focused their vicious rage against Kofi
Anan, now attacking his son to get at him. This might seem bizarre coming
from the friends of Enron, WorldCom, and Halliburton, people whose President
made his first dollar in an oil-stock deal that should have seen the SEC
sending him to jail, but hypocrisy has become almost a point of pride with
Republicans, particularly the Sequined Christian Warrior Wing of the party.

The personal attacks
against Anan and his son recall the attacks on former President Clinton and
his wife. When it wasn't about real estate, it was about sex, and when it
wasn't about sex, it was about a friend's suicide. Whatever it was, it had
nothing to do with governing the country or policy differences. The noise
went on for eight mind-numbing years, revealing an immense store of hatred
and the finances to promote it.

Anan was actually
America’s compromise to replace Boutros Boutros Ghali, a distinguished
intellectual and diplomat, hated and pushed from his post by Americans. His
crime was being too cosmopolitan and not pro-American enough, Americans so
often blurring the initials U.N. into U.S. Well, since Ghali's departure,
the standard of adequate pro-Americanism has swelled like a malignant brain
tumor. The soft-spoken, urbane Anan is just not good enough now, having
quietly said during Bush's re-election campaign that the American invasion
of Iraq was illegal, which it clearly was. Anyway, urbanity alone can get
you into serious trouble with the Grand Ole Opry crowd running Washington.

A pathetic re-run was
the election in Iraq. We saw it in Vietnam and in other places, the claim
that some great change had come through forced, much-photographed (and
rigged) elections. All those light-at-the-end-of-the-tunnel columns and
press releases when all that was at the end of the tunnel was a stupendous
pile of burnt Vietnamese corpses, mainly civilians. Well, that part too is
being repeated in Iraq. Dead civilians. Piles of them every week.

It is reported on the
Internet that the Shiite coalition actually received a much larger vote than
the figure set to headlines by America’s Office of Auxiliary Propaganda,
usually only known by names such as the New York Times, the
Washington Post, and CBS. The vote apparently was shaved behind the
scenes from around 60% to 48%, so that the new Iraqi government wouldn't
come in feeling its oats. After all, they have a lot to swallow, including
indefinite occupation, the establishment of permanent American airbases, and
a new embassy big and well equipped enough to provide a Middle East White
House and Spa for the convenience and comfort of future visiting American
dignitaries.

Ah, such faith in
democracy! But that is how the game of democracy is played in America
itself. The man with the never-explained electronic hump on his back during
television debates was “elected” twice using just such methods or variants.
Bush holds office with about the same sense of legitimacy as the White House
press credentials of a Karl Rove operative with nude pictures on the
Internet.

Palestine's new
President, Mahmoud Abbas, is working extremely hard to satisfy every demand
of Israel. It is hard to avoid the unpleasant impression of a new maid
polishing every spoon and fork late into the night. What is not apparent
right now is that Sharon and Abbas have very different ideas of what it is
that Abbas is working towards. Abbas certainly has in mind the end of
occupation and a genuinely independent Palestinian state. Sharon has in mind
the privilege of Abbas continuing through an endless maze called the peace
process.

The word “process”
should be retired from the English language for a while. Everything has
become a process. We have education processes instead of education,
political processes instead of politics, and peace processes instead of
peace. Sticking “process” onto other words represents an effort to make
whatever is happening seem bigger and more impressive than it actually is. I
could be convinced to exclude “peace process” from the proposed ban, the
inflated nothingness of the phrase pretty much fitting reality in this one
instance.

It's all a re-run
because, despite many failings, no one worked harder for an extended period
to build the foundations of a Palestinian state and peace with Israel than
Arafat. He turned his back on the written reason for his party's founding,
fought a fierce battle with other Palestinian parties, and worked hard for
the Oslo Accords. It was all for nothing. At Camp David he was offered the
statehood-equivalent of a set of empty barracks at several abandoned Israeli
military bases surrounded by barbed wire. Sharon, assisted by the Electronic
Hunchback of Washington, grotesquely shoved Arafat into a corner with no
permission to speak or travel. Sharon publicly threatened Arafat several
times with murder, and of course the circumstances of Arafat's death remain
quite unclear.

And it will prove the
same for Abbas. A huge and crushing disillusion lies ahead. Israel's idea of
a “peace process” is endless delays and excuses while establishing “new
facts on the ground” (a.k.a. seizing other peoples’ homes, orchards, and
water supplies) with the regularity of around-the-clock operations at an
automobile stamping plant.

John Chuckman
lives in Canada and is former chief economist for a large Canadian oil
company. Copyright (C) 2005 by John Chuckman.